Introduction to Local Food

The Business of Local Food Production

This section provides information for those that are currently involved with local food businesses or looking to start up. Producers looking to sell locally grown or raised products, or community groups starting a farmers market or coop can find marketing tools to help determine project feasibility. There are resources for identifying the link between local commerce and local economies, finding or starting community kitchens, sharing costs associated with converting to organic, and identifying and dealing with risk.

Marketing Strategies

Ohio’s Specialty Crops: A Boost to Food Service Menus
The Ohio State University
This resource directed at Ohio farmers provides information that can be useful to farmers everywhere. Includes tips on making deliveries, packaging, pricing, and good agricultural practices. Case studies and interviews of various successful farming operations are informative and instructive.

U.S. Food Market EstimatorLeopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture — Iowa State University
This tool can help users determine market demand for over 200 different food items. You can measures food purchased and consumed county by county throughout the US. Results can be adjusted to show expected market share.

Marketing Michigan Products: A Step-by-Step GuideC.S. Mott Group for Sustainable Food Systems — Michigan State University
This is a complete, step by step marketing guide for those looking to sell their products to schools. It includes tips and strategies, self-assessment, insurance considerations, school food budgets, and resources to link to farm to school programs. Some things are specific to Michigan, but many will be applicable everywhere.

National Farm to School Network
This is a one-stop resource for farm to school. Click on your state to find out where you can get local help for your community and find resources, publications, webinars, and more.

Commodities and ProductsAgricultural Marketing Resource Center
This website provides basic information and marketing resources for a large variety of commodities, specialty crops, and other horticultural products.

Marketing Studies and Feasibility Studies

What is a Feasibility Study?Iowa State University Extension
This website provides a description of feasibility studies, describes why they are important, and links to information about how to do a feasibility study outline. This is an important resource for entrepreneurs and community groups looking into starting up a large food related venture.

Is Your Agribusiness Project Feasible?The University of Georgia Cooperative Extension
This article can give insight into whether or not your business idea is feasible. It is framed in terms of large scale agribusiness but might also be useful for a small mid-sized enterprise. This includes lots of good information for those who are considering marketing a new commodity, using new technology, expanding markets, and more.

The Economic Feasibility of a Blueberry Packing Facility in Southeast GeorgiaCenter for Agribusiness and Economic Development — The University of Georgia
This is an example of a feasibility study for a packing facility to process a specialty crop. This will provide a basic understanding of what type of information a feasibility study provides and why it is important when conceptualizing a business idea.

Southern Wisconsin Food Hub Feasibility StudyDane County Planning and Development Department
This is a detailed and professionally produced feasibility study for a food hub in a medium-sized Wisconsin city. This can serve as a good resource for communities looking to start a food hub in their region.

Market Research: The How ToPenn State College of Agricultural Sciences
In this easy to use reference guide you will find the eight steps of market research, market research methods, and how to do market research.

Iowa Cafe Part II: Training for New Food and Farming VenturesAgricultural Marketing Resource Center
This is a curriculum about marketing for beginning farmers. It includes lots of resources, worksheets, publications, and more. Get started on the module by clicking on Getting Started, Marketing, Products/Production, or Business Management and Resources.

Federal Produce Policy ManualFederal Produce Policy
This site provides daily commodity prices for fruits, nuts, potatoes and onions, and vegetables. This is a helpful tool for researching the going prices for a variety of organic and conventional agricultural products and varieties. This is good information for producers and food related community groups to help them identify expected prices for a variety of products.

Business Planning

AgPlanCenter for Farm Financial Management — University of Minnesota
This is a site for learning all about agricultural business plans. Tools from developing your business plan and learning what you need to reviewing sample business plans and sharing your own plan with your reviewers to see how it stacks up. Create your own account, login, and get started for free.

Risk Management in 2012: What Does it Really Mean?Iowa State University Extension
This article identifies and explains the five different areas of risk: production risk, marketing risk, financial risk, legal risk, and human risk. Learn about risk and what you can do to minimize risk in for your business.

Organic Cost Share ProgramAgricultural Marketing Service — United States Department of Agriculture
This cost share program is for producers that are interested in transitioning to organic production. The program provides financial assistance for the costs involved with certification for eligible applicants.

EQIP Organic InitiativeNatural Resource Conservation Service — United States Department of Agriculture
This site provides information about the USDA’s Environmental Quality Incentive Program which provides assistance for conservation practices and planning for organic producers, in order to provide sustainability in agricultural practices. If you are an organic farmer, technical and financial assistance may be available.

One-Page PlanningRisk Management Agency — United States Department of Agriculture
This site provides an introduction to business planning and financial planning for people interested in starting or expanding a farm enterprise. It includes tools for big, small, conventional or organic farmers and ranchers like the One-Page Business Plan and the One-Page Financial Plan.

Market ResearchAgricultural Marketing Resource Center
This site provides extensive tips and information you can use to producing useful market research for your operation or entrepreneurial ideas.

A Do-It-Yourself Producer’s Guide to Conducting Local Market ResearchAgricultural Marketing Resource Center
A producer oriented instruction guide to help you determine if your local market will be fertile ground for selling value-added products. This guide demonstrates in easy-to-understand language how to collect and analyze data that you will use to make business decisions.

Before You StartPenn State Extension
This resource gives food production entrepreneurs tips on getting started, navigating regulations, and marketing food products.

Guidebook for Beginning FarmersThe GreenhornsThis guidebook provides information on how to navigate the farming industry, including marketing strategies and community involvement opportunities.

Starting a Food Business in MinnesotaMinnesota Department of Agriculture
This guide is an overview of all the information one needs to know to start up a food related business in Minnesota. The guide explains all of the different codes and licenses that are commonly required as well as inspection processes. Find out if you’re ready to open a retail business, a catering company, or a food manufacturing operation.

Enterprise Budgets

Iowa Fruit & Vegetable Production BudgetsIowa State University Extension
This website describes enterprise budgets and links to worksheets for fruit and vegetable budget decision tools for a variety of common crops.

Fresh Market Vegetable BudgetsCenter for Dairy Profitability
This site contains links to a variety of excel worksheets for enterprise budgets for a variety of common crops. These are helpful tools to determine profitability.

Promoting the Local Economy

Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE)
This organization’s website can serve as a clearinghouse for research, resources, information, campaigns, and support for local economy efforts. This is a great place to get connected, join in, and get support for growing your local food economy.

Top 10 Reasons to Support Locally Owned BusinessesInstitute for Local Self-Reliance
This document explains why it’s important to support local economies. From character and prosperity to product diversity and everything in between. This information can be downloaded as a pdf and distributed in your community.

Pickle Bill

Pickle Bill Fact SheetMinnesota Department of Agriculture
This fact sheet provides all you need to know before selling your pickled goods in Minnesota. It covers legislation that allows the limited sale of certain home-pickled and home-processed food to the general public. Similar legislation also exists in other states.

Small-Scale Production of Acidified Canned FoodUniversity of Wisconsin — Madison; University of Wisconsin Extension
This website helps Wisconsin producers navigate the licensing and rules related to selling home-canned foods. It also has some helpful links for non-Wisconsin producers including info on how to measure pH, calibrate your thermometer, and keeping a production and process log, and information and links on the subject of processing food.

Community Kitchens

Commercial Kitchen GuideUniversity of Minnesota Extension – Southwest Regional Sustainable Development Partnership
This is a regulatory manual for people looking to build commercial community kitchens or operate in a commercial community kitchen in Minnesota. This guide will help the user navigate the complicated regulatory environment needed to scale up production for wholesale or retail sales.

Community Kitchens: Key Elements of Success (Research Brief #54)Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems — University of Wisconsin – Madison
This site contains tips for creating a successful community kitchen. Key factors for success include identifying your community goals for the kitchen to locating suitable kitchens already available in your area.

Community Kitchen Facilities in MinneapolisCity of Minneapolis
Example of what a community kitchen inventory might look like. This inventory lists the names, addresses, and rental fees for a number of facilities in the Minneapolis area.

Culinary Incubator
This online map shows kitchen incubators around the country. It can be a resource to learn about a variety of different community kitchens. Check this out to see if your community already has a kitchen available.

Post-harvest Handling

Postharvest Handling for Organic CropsUniversity of California — Davis
This overview of general postharvest handling considerations is unique to the marketing of registered or certified organic produce. It covers topics like storage, sanitization and water disinfection, cleaners, sanitizers, disinfectants, and more.

Other

National Good Food NetworkWallace Center at Winrock — International
The Wallace Center at Winrock — International is a leader at building networks of local food researchers and practitioners. The Center hosts monthly webinars on a variety of local food topics that are focused on issues from directly supporting farmers with informational support and business advice, to addressing difficult problems and offering solutions to local food supply chain issues, to proposing alternative financing options. This is a link to the archives of webinars hosted by the Wallace Center.

Starting a Food Business in MinnesotaMinnesota Department of Agriculture
This guide is an overview of all the information one needs to know to start up a food related business in Minnesota. The guide explains all of the different codes and licenses that are commonly required as well as inspection processes. Find out if you’re ready to open a retail business, a catering company, or a food manufacturing operation.

Did the Locker Plant Steal Some of My Meat?South Dakota State University
This guide will help determine how much meat to expect from a carcass. Examples are given for beef, pork, and lamb and can help you keep informed about how much your animal harvests should yield.